I’ll almost certainly like the Supreme Court nomination that Mr. Trump has promised us for next week. I thoroughly dislike Steve Bannon. I like Betsy DeVos for Education, since I strongly favor school choice. I regard Rex Tillerson as extremely competent, but worry about his coziness with Putin and Russia.
So it’s a mixed bag, but I’m cautiously optimistic in some respects.
I still have strong reservations, however, about whether Mr. Trump is intellectually and psychologically fit for the presidency:
“Trump Aides Keep Leaking Embarrassing Stories About How He Can’t Handle Embarrassment”
“Trump Reportedly Brought His Own Staff to Cheer during C.I.A. Speech” (from, appropriately enough, Vanity Fair)
I’m worried, too, about Mr. Trump’s treatment of Mexico:
“Humiliating Mexico over the Wall Would Be a Big Mistake”
“President Trump, Be Wary of a Mexican Backlash”
And, as I wrote in a blog entry the other day, I don’t like his idea that the United States should seize Middle Eastern oilfields:
“Donald Trump: ‘Had we taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS'”
Some, responding to that post, insisted that Mr. Trump only meant that we should deny the revenue of those oilfields to ISIS, which would be entirely reasonable. But that’s not all that he meant, as this article from roughly a year and a half ago illustrates:
“Donald Trump’s Odd Fixation on Seizing Middle Eastern Oil Fields”
And — although I won’t comment on it in more detail right now — I’m very concerned about his newly announced decree regarding immigrants and refugees.
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